DHS Will Reissue Controversial Rules

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Homeland Security Department is appealing a judge's ruling against its proposal to force employers to fire workers whose names don't match their Social Security numbers, and promises to try to make the policy a law.

A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the "no-match rule" in October, saying it would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. Employers would incur new costs to comply with the regulation that the government hasn't evaluated, and innocent workers unable to correct mistakes in their records in time would lose their jobs, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote.

In a document issued late Friday, the department addressed several of the judge's concerns, saying among other things that the rule doesn't create new legal obligations for businesses.

"It simply outlines clear steps an employer may take in response to receiving a letter from the Social Security Administration indicating that an employee's name does not match the Social Security number on file," the department said.

The document says the department intends to press ahead with the same set of rules the judge blocked in October.

"We are serious about immigration enforcement. The no-match rule is an important tool for cracking down on illegal hiring practices while providing honest employers with the guidance they need," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a news release.

The document released Friday "tries to explain away the problems the court saw last year," said Maria Elena Hincapie, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, who argued the case last year.

The AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce object to the program, saying it would foster discrimination on work sites, lead to job losses by lawful employees and expose businesses to additional expense and fear of prosecution.

I suspect that this, among other things, heralds the downfall of DHS, at least in its current form and function. There are several reasons for this, but few that have to do with its mission.

1) It is irredeemably associated with the Bush administration and the War on Terror, even though that is only a tiny amount of what it does. Future Presidents, of either party, will see it as “more trouble than it’s worth”, tying them up in endless litigation, and with little to show the public for it. On top of that the Democrats will oppose it for the sake of opposing it.

2) Its model is too close to that of an internal security “apparat” used by far more authoritarian governments. Things such as internal passports, identity and employment papers, surveillance and dossiers have never been effective against their intended targets, but are always oppressive, intrusive and expensive for ordinary citizens.

Right now, the State of Florida, for example, has an estimated quarter of a million unlicensed drivers, and the police just ignore it, in favor of pursuing *bad* drivers, who are far more important to get off the road.

3) A simple, easy to understand, wrong solution to complex problems is very attractive to many people. Things such as socialized medicine and gun control never disappear because they are simple to comprehend, even if they don’t work, and cannot be made to work. An internal security service, like DHS, has in past been far more attractive to Democrats than Republicans for just this reason. Republicans wanted something that works against known threats, Democrats just because it was simple.

While Bush created DHS for very good reasons, the next Bill Clinton President will do his level best to corrupt their operations against his political enemies. Indifferent to its real mission, its wide latitude of operations make it delectable to those who would abuse its power.

Importantly, the ink was hardly dry on the Patriot Act before police across the US began using it for non-terrorism related investigations. Things already offensive, such as drug raids on the homes of innocent people, were made spectacularly worse with Patriot Act provisions thrown in.

4) When the Social Security system was created, it was with the insistence that it *not* be used as a national identification system. However, even then it was cynically understood to *be* a national ID system, no matter what was said. In practical terms, the REAL ID system has the same flaws, and the technology changes nothing. It will be issued by State Motor Vehicle Departments, that are notoriously corrupt and inefficient.

5) Citizen dossiers are amazingly inaccurate. Most people would be appalled with how inaccurate, and there is little if any information verification. If the government decides you are dead, you *are* dead, and it might take you years to prove otherwise. This leads to nightmarish and Kafkaesque hassles.

6) Politically Correct security is not security. As long as DHS is forced to do things this way, it will continue to irritate the vast majority of good citizens, to no good end, yet will pass those profiled individuals who feign offense. With profiling of the suspicious minority instead of suspecting *everyone*, airline security would be just as good, but cost just a fraction of what it does under DHS. The threat from drunks and lunatics is far greater and more common than from terrorists and skyjackers.

All told, if you put it all together, despite the need for an “American philosophy” DHS, there is almost no way that it will either work, be allowed to work, or not cost far more than the US could ever afford.

And as I suggested, it doesn’t matter if it is needed or wanted.

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